CNBC reactionary Joe Kernen interviewed Señor Trumpanzee in Davos yesterday, allowing him to just lie his ass off. The video above, though begins towards the very end when Trump talks about cutting "entitlements" (Social Security and Medicare) at the end of the year-- in other words-- after the election. His rationale is... what you might expect from a senile person-- and, of course, from a liar. Consecutive polls are showing a majority, not a plurality of Americans would like to see the Senate remove Trump. If Americans understood his and the GOP's post-election plans for for Social Security and Medicare, the numbers for removal would be much higher. He's as bad as Status Quo Joe on this!Now about those 19 Trump stooges who were part of the 53 who voted down every single request for witnesses and evidence Tuesday night. Let's start with the names:
• Dan Sullivan (R-AK)• Martha McSally (R-AZ)• Tom Cotton (R-AR)• Cory Gardner (R-CO)• David Perdue (R-GA)• Kelly Loeffler (R-GA)• Jim Risch (R-ID)• Joni Ernst (R-IA)• Moscow Mitch (R-KY)• Bill Cassidy (R-LA)• Susan Collins (R-ME)• Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)• Steve Daines (R-MT)• Ben Sasse (R-NE)• Thom Tillis (R-NC)• Jim Inhofe (R-OK)• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)• Mike Rounds (R-SD)• John Cornyn (R-TX)• Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
The names in red are locked in for reelection. The seven names in blue are the best bets for defeat. And the ones in black... well, it depends a lot on how big the wave is in red states this year. It's not making the 53-- let alone the 19-- feel any more confident in the Republican strategy that public opinion has swung even further against them after the first days of the trial. Jonathan Allen reporting for NBC News, noted that Trump's defense looked shaky from the start. Allen: "Trump's defense failed him at the opening of his Senate impeachment trial Tuesday... McConnell had one job. He just had to collect 51 votes for the trial rules he had written, in close consultation with White House officials, to deliver Trump an acquittal quickly, quietly and with as few surprises as possible. He couldn't do it. Fellow Republicans balked at his plan so late in the game-- moments before the start of the trial-- that he had to order up hand-written changes sought by Democrats just to secure enough GOP votes for the rules. So much for the modern 'master of the Senate.'"
The other half of Trump's squad, his legal team, chose not to defend his actions with a cogent explanation for them. Rather than rebutting hours of evidence presented by House Democratic impeachment managers, White House lawyers opted to repeat Trump's attacks on the process and the disjointed set of rejoinders he's delivered to Democrats in public.“If you can't even rise to the challenge of trying to defend your client," NBC News legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said on NBC News Now, "it becomes painfully obvious that the emperor has no defense."Taken together, McConnell and the White House team demonstrated that, for all of their coordination and the institutional advantages afforded them by Republicans' Senate majority, they still appear focused more on pleasing their audience of one-- Trump-- than persuading any undecided senators or voters outside the chamber.But Trump's defenders are as devoid of his passion as they are loaded with his logic, leaving them so weak in the face of the Democratic case that even the president may wind up displeased with the obvious imbalance in the quality of the execution by the parties."If there’s any unfairness in these proceedings, it’s the astounding mismatch between the high skill and preparation of the House managers and the rambling, dissembling, and gaslighting of @realDonaldTrump’s counsel," George Conway, a conservative lawyer and prominent Trump critic, wrote on Twitter. "It’s like the New York Yankees versus the Bad News Bears."...The outlines of that case so far, described Tuesday by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-CA) alleged that Trump abused his power at the expense of U.S. interests to boost his own, then covered up his actions by obstructing Congress."GOP Senators may vote to acquit, but there is something truly cleansing to the national conscience to see Adam Schiff walk into their chamber and shove a full dose of truth down their throats before they do," former Rep. David Jolly, who served as a Republican from Florida, wrote on Twitter.Despite the rocky start for Team Trump, there's no indication the president will have trouble winning the 34 votes he needs to remain in office. But a shaky defense could cost him votes among the electorate-- at this point, the audience that may matter most.
Phil Bump brought something else up, something that would be important in another, saner world, namely that after the 53 blocked all the new impeachment evidence, Trump boasted about what he’s withholding. He wrote that "In total, the Senate took 11 votes on amendments to the rules aimed at broadening the evidence that would be included in the impeachment trial of President Trump. They were, in order:
1. A subpoena to get documents from the White House.2. A subpoena to get documents from the State Department.3. A subpoena to get documents from the Office of Management and Budget.4. A subpoena for testimony from Mick Mulvaney, former OMB director and acting White House chief of staff.5. A subpoena to get documents from the Defense Department.6. A subpoena to get testimony from Robert Blair, an aide to Mulvaney, and Michael Duffey, a political appointee at OMB.7. A proposal to mandate that inclusion of testimony excerpted from materials would necessitate the release to both sides of the material in its entirety.8. A subpoena for testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton.9. A proposal to eliminate a mandated vote before the Senate could vote on calling witnesses.10. A proposal to allow additional time for responding to motions.11. A proposal allowing Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial, to determine whether witnesses or evidence should be included.
"In each case but one," he continued, "the proposed amendments were tabled on a 47-to-53 vote. The lone exception was the 10th amendment, for which Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) joined the Democratic caucus in support of the proposal-- but it, too, was tabled when a majority of senators, all Republicans, voted in opposition to it... it was another example of the remarkable unanimity with which congressional Republicans have approached the impeachment effort. While Trump and his allies have excoriated the process as being a manifestation of Democratic partisanship, it’s certainly the case that Trump has benefited enormously from his own party’s lockstep voting. In the House, that agreement-- setting aside party defector Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI), who supported impeachment-- allowed Trump et al to make the case about a partisan impeachment in the first place. In the Senate, it meant that McConnell’s proposed rules for proceeding through the trial would not be immediately overhauled by the inclusion of things that might be problematic for the president’s case.
Democrats hammered at the significance of rejecting the proposals: Were Senate Republicans saying that they were disinterested in knowing the truth about what happened? Republicans, for their part, had a pat response: Didn’t you think you had enough evidence to make your case when the impeachment articles were addressed in the House?President Trump wasn’t in Washington for any of this. As the votes unfolded, he was in Switzerland, having given an address at the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos. Early Wednesday morning, though, he offered his thoughts during a news conference at the event.“So here’s the story: Did nothing wrong,” Trump said of the impeachment push. “... The best lawyers in the world have looked at it. The Department of Justice has looked at it, given it a sign-off. There was nothing wrong.”He walked through his now-familiar complaints about the evidence and then confirmed that he’d seen some of the debate.“I got to watch enough. I thought our team did a very good job,” he said. “But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.”That quote, in that context, in that moment, is potentially problematic. Trump appears to be saying that he has material reinforcing how his position of innocence is warranted-- material that “they,” presumably Democrats, can’t see.Which, of course, was largely Schumer’s point. There is a lot of evidence that has been withheld by Trump and his administration, including things as seemingly mundane as personal calendars for State Department staffers. On several occasions during the impeachment testimony in the House, witnesses lamented that they couldn’t answer questions with specificity because they didn’t have access to material that the State Department wasn’t releasing.Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), also a House impeachment manager, quickly seized upon Trump’s comment as evidence that he was retaining pertinent material.Trump has argued repeatedly that if witnesses such as Mulvaney were to testify, they’d reinforce his arguments about the case. He has also, as the impeachment process has moved forward, been increasingly less likely to forcefully advocate for the inclusion of such testimony. (Asked during his Davos news conference whether he wanted to see witnesses in the Senate trial, Trump replied that he would “leave that to the Senate.”)His comments on Wednesday morning, though, go further, seemingly hinting that there might even be an advantage for the White House in keeping material out of the hands of Democrats. That his team was better informed. That, at least, there was pertinent material that he and his team were simply keeping to themselves.It’s not that this isn’t known to be the case. There is obviously documentary and witness evidence that the White House has sought to keep out of the Democrats’ hands-- an effort bolstered by McConnell’s caucus on Tuesday. It’s just not obviously useful for Trump in this moment to reinforce that this is what he is doing.McConnell’s twin goals in the impeachment process are to protect Trump and protect vulnerable swing-state GOP senators. The former effort seemingly necessitates limiting the evidence presented at trial; the latter, ensuring that voters see the trial as fair and thorough. The Senate majority leader worked late into the night to line up 11 victories on the first point-- only to see Trump himself undercut the second point from Switzerland a few hours later.
